


Let This Darkness Be

by Dummythiccx3



Category: Warrior Nun (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Crack, F/F, Oneshot, Post-Canon, Subtle but not so subtle? yk, kinda rushy but i didnt mean for it to be, puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28024503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dummythiccx3/pseuds/Dummythiccx3
Summary: "Quiet friend who has come so far,feel how your breathing makes more space around you.Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring,what batters you becomes your strength.Move back and forth into the change.What is it like, such intensity of pain?...In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there.And if the world has ceased to hear you,say to the silent earth: I flow.To the rushing water, speak, I am" (Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29).
Relationships: Sister Beatrice/Ava Silva
Kudos: 76





	Let This Darkness Be

On a particularly relentless night, Ava wanders the somber halls of the cathedral. Without any other purpose than to distract her mind from the torment of Adriel, she studies the paintings, sculptures and the carvings in the faded ashlar stone walls. She hopes for nothing more than to lose herself in the ornate beauty of the sacred art. But, after a while, the expressive (and quite frankly legendary) depictions of her predecessors seemed only to encourage her inner turmoil; their epic scriptures adorned each wall, fueling Ava’s own berating self-talk. She knows staying within the fortification of the OCS’s headquarters will worsen her night, so she ventures outdoors.

Finding discomfort in the shriveled flower petals littering the garden’s pathways, distress in every lifeless crunch under her step, Ava resorts to the sky instead. The stars that guided her through a brief yet fruitful childhood until she could enjoy their boundless twinkling company no longer. She could count on the constellations for tonight.

Like nights before, Ava took to climbing the bell tower associated with their headquarters. Unfortunately, the wind of the night had picked up while she walked amongst the bushes and greenery of the garden, the branches and leaves bustling with gusts of cool air -- she would have to take more caution this time around. Her hands and feet found easy purchase in the engravings of the tower’s architecture, but the wild wind was whistling past her, now halfway up to her destination. However satisfying the chilly night air felt against her warm skin, a tangle of hair whipped wildly about her head with every unstable blow. The girl, practically blind while her hair tended to block her sight, perseveres and continues to scramble up the length until one of her palms reaches the top platform. Pulling her dangling body into the refuge of the bell’s rightful home, the Halo-Bearer huffed at nothing in particular, brushing her clothes of dirt that she earned from the climb.

To Ava’s dismay, she detects a presence nearby, on the edge of the adjacent archway. There, a form of a woman sat with her back facing her new guest. The woman’s hair flowed darkly beside her, nearly blending with the night; her white long sleeve t-shirt ruffled against the breeze. She reminded Ava of a haunting kind of love story, though the girl had yet to read any.

“There are stairs, you know,” the woman speaks, not unkindly, into the shadows of dusk.

That startles Ava, though she doesn’t let it discredit her mind from the familiar fondness she recognizes in the woman’s accent. Neither does she let distract her the fact that the nun’s hair is down, drifting, unperturbed and confident under the stars. She cannot help but to prefer it this way.

“I know,” Ava says, “but where’s the fun in that?”

Beatrice looks back then, a reserved smile in place. “I suppose you have a point. Although, I didn’t know it was possible to climb up here without plummeting to your death. I guess only you would challenge that.”

Ava chuckles, stepping toward her friend before asking: “May I?”

Beatrice nods and shifts to allow extra room for her company. As Ava ducks under the bell and sits, the other turns her gaze back to the Spanish city their tower overlooks. Up here she feels almost infinite, above humanity and society’s incessant pressures. Yet, it’s up here, also, that she is able to acknowledge how small she is compared to those policies thriving just below her legs. Beatrice admits defeat. 

Ava sighs, swinging her legs over the ledge once situated. “You should’ve seen me the first time I fell, ’cause I’m pretty sure I’d be paralyzed, _again_ , if it wasn’t for the Halo. . . . Took me a few good lives to get up here.” She pats the solid ground between them.

“And it never occurred to you to just use the stairs, several bones surely broken?” Beatrice asked, incredulously.

“Well . . . no, not really. But -- ”

“Ava -- !”

“Hey, hey, hey! Just take it as independent training?” Ava offered hopefully. “That’s a thing, right? I promise not to climb any more random towers anymore. Unless there’s a princess to save, of course.” Ava winks and leans to nudge her companion’s shoulder, and the ladder relents with a sigh.

"Just, please, be less careless."

“You know what?” Ava tips her head up to greet the bell hanging overhead. “I think it’s even more dangerous chilling under this old ass bell that probably weighs, like, 1,000 tons.”

“Roughly 1,114 kilograms, which would actually convert to around one and one-quarter tons.”

Ava begins to stare at her strangely.

“What?” Beatrice asks, and Ava shakes her head with a smile, looking away.

They sit in an easy silence, staring at the blackness above, the city’s faraway lights, or, simply, space. Each in their own heads. Each leaving room for the next to unwind their own secrets aloud. But neither truly expects the other to do so. 

It is the acquitted tower-climber that breaks first.

“So . . . what’s got a Sister like you climbing bell towers at night?”

“Correction: _I_ wasn’t the one who climbed up here.” Beatrice gives Ava a pointed look. “I used the stairs like a normal person.”

“Yeah, yeah, Normie,” Ava dismisses, scoffing playfully, then regards the nun hopefully. So Beatrice explains (partially, at least), gazing up at the moon.

“I come up here to collect my thoughts when I can’t do it down there.” As the air settles from its previous gale, Beatrice soaks in its moment of calm. “Many don’t think to look for me here. And the darkness helps.” She smiles beneath the weight of her words.

Ava frowns but recovers, quipping, “The air is definitely better up here, I’ll give you that.” She breathes deeply and releases the breath subsequently. When watching the younger girl act so at ease, the nun’s eyes betray the perpetual reminders to keep unnecessary affection from seeping through. But her smile reveals that she could, perhaps for tonight, care more about her own cowardice.

Caught up in her own awe of Ava, she fails to register a tear slipping over the apple of her cheek. Whether happy or sad, the woman would be ignorant to which encouraged its slow voyage to the edge of her lips. Before she could wipe it from existence, Ava sees.

A hand reaches for her own — restrained upon her lap — and the nun’s breath hitches as the next tear, in solitary silence, begins a fleeting journey to her chin. Fingers meet knotted knuckles: they grab, they anchor.

Beatrice cannot meet Ava’s eyes, so she glares at their joined hands until she can grapple her emotions -- 

_Reel it in_ , she scolds herself. 

“What’s wrong?” Ava asks in a whisper, just firm enough that the Sister Warrior finally reaches the Halo-Bearer’s gentle, determined eyes. “Please, tell me.”

Beatrice instinctually lifts her eyes to the skies in order to manage their glossy entirety. Pulling her hands out from Ava’s warmth, she wipes the evidence from her face. Once she is sure to be contained, she manages to lock eyes with her friend. “Last night, my father passed away. I only just heard the news today.”

“Shit . . .” Ava murmurs into the space remaining between them. “What -- What does that mean?”

A rather stripped and careful question, but Beatrice understands. She takes a deep breath, deciding the sky is the easiest to look into at the moment. The nun takes note of the stars that shine the brightest, assessing their beauty -- their worthiness. Why is each one entitled to its own blip in the universe?

“I don’t know . . . ” she finds herself answering. “You know part of the story, Ava, but never will you learn it all.”

Ava is unsure if she believes the amount of certainty Beatrice forces into that statement. She sounds so wishful that Ava will indeed never learn the unabridged story, and Ava has no idea what to do with that. 

“I’ve always felt . . . confined to an air-tight piece of tupperware,” Beatrice says, slowly, a guise of calm, presenting her words to the God she is promised to above. “And the walls are just so _plastic. . . ._ And now that its seal is starting to tear, I’m afraid I’m spilling from every crack I can find.” Her eyes well up, but she shakes her head at an out-of-place cloud that blocks her view of the section of stars she was planning to commit to memory -- shakes her head at her weakness. 

“I’m not sure whether to mourn -- or celebrate -- or . . . ” She rids herself of fragmented thoughts. “I’m just so bloody confused.” 

The hand that had anchored her what feels like lifetimes ago ascends to cup her face, thumb hovering just under her lower eyelid, preventing the next tear from submitting to gravity.

“It’s okay to be confused, Beatrice,” Ava says, and Beatrice smiles into her palm, tilting her cheek further into its pressure. “You can’t expect yourself to be prepared for every time a . . . seal breaks. You’re not meant to be contained.

“Celebrate. Mourn. Hell, do both, or do neither,” Ava resumes. “Whatever feels right”

Both hands now resting on either side of her face -- her last two tethers to earth -- Beatrice forces herself to see into Ava’s dark eyes and through to the galaxies unexplored behind them. Her mind refuses to comprehend the intent behind those two vessels. So Beatrice breaks contact, overwhelmed, insisting on analyzing the multitudes above their heads. Ava lets her.

“I’m spilling out everywhere, aren’t I?” The Sister Warrior sighs, does not attempt to clean up her mess; it’s too late.

“That’s _okay_ ,” Ava stresses. “And, honestly, who isn’t anymore? I mean -- Jesus -- we’re all screwed, whether we like it or not.” Beatrice does not admonish Ava for her choice of language, instead laughing quietly along with the girl. The nun allows her hand to linger intertwined with her friend’s on the floor between them. Their soft laughter subsides.

Ava asks, moments later: “You remember, right?”

The nun’s eyebrows furrow, tilting her head at the starlight, a signal for Ava to continue.

“What you are is beautiful. . . . _Who_ you are is beautiful.” And Beatrice smiles, truly smiles.

“I wouldn’t dare forget.”

All those fleeting moments in ARQ-Tech, under more pressure than any of their team had experienced in previous missions -- in life, itself. This kind of pressure, Beatrice wonders, must be what it takes for her strong bonds to break, for she would never be consciously considering sneaking a peek at her leader’s lips if that weight ceased to develop.

Ava, once again, bounds into Beatrice’s reverie, like a Golden Retriever bolting back home. The Halo-Bearer uses their combined hands to her advantage, lifting hers and Beatrice’s to point to the heavens. “You see that constellation? The one that looks like a deformed W?” Beatrice feels restored at this new, lighter topic of discussion, and follows their united index fingers to the described shape as Ava traces it. Their heads nearly collide as they attempt to see as one.

“Yes,” Beatrice says.

“Her name's Cassiopeia.”

Beatrice dips her head into a nod, familiar with the name’s legend: The Greek myth that explores the perils of conceited beauty. Ava lets their arms fall and relax, and the Sister gives her hand a squeeze, to continue.

“She grounds me,” Ava says, “when I need her to.” The Halo emboldens Ava, so she sways closer to her friend, bumping their sides. “She’s one of the last _official_ constellations that I remember from my mom.”

Beatrice rips her eyes away from the tragic story concealed in the stars. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Ava smirked in recollection, swinging her legs out, suspended in open air. “My mom told me all about the story, too. . . . Something about Cassiopeia being arrogant about her beauty? Or her daughter’s? I can’t remember.”

Mirroring Ava, the other rocks her legs back and forth. Their heels knock against the outer wall of the bell tower, as Beatrice comments, “I’ve heard it told both ways.”

The Halo-Bearer sweeps her free hand through windswept hair, the other palm still existing atop Beatrice’s. “She really is gorgeous, though. I can’t blame Poseidon for getting his panties in a twist. I’d send a sea monster after her ass, too!” Her smirk returns. 

Beatrice’s shoulders shake with silent chuckles at the Halo-Bearer’s antics. “What exactly happened to her? I can’t remember.”

“Well -- ” Ava gestures to the northern constellation “ -- basically, Poseidon sat her down on a chair, up there, in the heavens. Even tied her down as well, right?” She looks to Beatrice for affirmation. Then her tone turns downright sultry: “If that doesn’t tell you enough about Poseidon’s pastimes I don’t know what does.”

Beatrice finds herself shamelessly gawking at Ava’s self-satisfied expression. “Stop that!” she demands, much to Ava’s contentment.

The girl laughs. “What are you talking about?!”

“What you’re doing!” Beatrice says, accusingly.

“Alright, Beatrice, you’re being uncharacteristically unhelpful. What am I doing?” 

“We are in a _holy_ place, Ava.” But the nun is only half-serious. “There’s no room for your innuendos here.”

Ava rolls her eyes in jest. “Well, pardon me if I don’t save it for the demons. Ooh, but look!” Ava urges. “If I squint, it kinda looks like she’s head over heels for me. Never mind Poseidon.” The girl makes a performance out of squinting at the upturned M constellation.

“Careful now. Don’t want to end up _star_ struck, do you?” Beatrice puns back, right on cue.

“Too late.”

A night that began with reeling thoughts and solitude ended with horrid puns and intimate company. Dawn breaks before Ava and Beatrice are broken from their trance. It is the songs of thrushes and the thumps and cracks of morning combat training outside the cathedral that serves as a division between the two -- A reminder of who they are.

Beatrice clears her throat, disrupting the peace they claimed, and scoots back from the edge and the bell, to stand. She places her hands behind her back: the image of refined manners. “Shall we?” Offering a curt nod and a practiced smile to Ava, she gestures to their exit.

Ava appears as if she had forgotten that there remained proper responsibilities, after adjusting to their own little world. “Oh! Yeah.”

Standing, albeit without the same finesse as Beatrice, Ava almost forgets about the bell just above, but Beatrice drags her out before she wakes the city with her head.

“Ava, where are you going?” Beatrice asks when Ava veers off from the short path to the spiral staircase. She grabs a hold of the Halo-Bearer’s wrist before she wanders too far.

The Bearer whips back, glancing at the nun’s hesitant grip on her wrist. Then, she jabs a thumb behind her, pointed at the archway she arrived through after scaling the tower Beatrice looked over Ava’s shoulder, at what was implied to be her friend’s way out, and rolled her eyes.

Giving her leader a glare, Beatrice tightened her hand around the wrist, hoping to squeeze some reason back into Ava’s insufferable logic.

“ _Oh!_ Right . . . ” Ava tries to deliver her most charming of smiles. However, Beatrice just rolls her eyes once more, releases her friend’s forearm, and turns on her heels, heading through her own, rational course of descent from the tower.

“Hey! Wait -- Bea! Wait for me!”

**Author's Note:**

> Head over heels*: The Greek myth of the beautiful Queen Cassiopeia describes the punishment she, along with her daughter, faces. Being tied to a chair and sentenced to live her days upside down in the heavens for all of eternity -- This is a pun that I believe I am very clever to have come up with, so applaud, will you?


End file.
